The Priorities of Progressives

I offer here a remarkably savvy insight into progressive thinking and priorities from Jim Geraghty of the National Review, cited by Eytan Kobre in Mishpacha Magazine:

A list of progressives’ fears would offer a mix of the insignificant, the theoretical, the farfetched, and the mundane… climate change a century from now, the Koch Brothers, insufficient cultural sensitivity in video games… New York mayor Bill DeBlasio is on a crusade to save his city from charter schools and horse-drawn carriages…

You notice progressives don’t spend a lot of time and energy fearing flights of people from countries with Ebola, and unsecured border, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Vladimir Putin’s aggression, the declining number of two-parent families…

This may be a bit of psychological transference. When the Leftists notice things like ISIS, Putin’s aggression, or the collapse of the family, on some level — perhaps subconsciously — they realize their prefered options are unlikely to be effective. Confronting that fact would force them to reevaluate how they see the world — and sometimes, after a sufficiently dramatic or frightening event such as 9/11, some people actually do change their worldview.

But a lot of people can’t or won’t overhaul their entire philosophy and understanding of how the world works. So they deny the idea that any of these are real problems or worthy of much attention or discussion — they reflect GOP scaremongering, others’ paranoia, etc.

But all that fear and anxiety and anger has to go somewhere… and thus it gets expressed at much more convenient and much more philosophically aligned targets — i.e., climate change a century from now, the Koch Brothers, insufficient cultural sensitivity in video games, and so on.

In other words, if the big problems of the world are likely to remain insoluble unless I change my approach to political, economic, and social dynamics, then I’m likely to shift my focus to more abstract issues that don’t force me to question my own ideological predisposition.

This reminds me of a meeting I once had with my editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the course of the conversation I mentioned columnist Charles Krauthammer. Without missing a beat, my editor said, “I hate him.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s so articulate that I find myself agreeing with him… and I don’t!”

Had I been less protective of my position at the time, I would have suggested that she reexamine some of her positions. Oh, well. I guess I can suggest it now.